Lanterns Season 1 Preview: When Green Lantern Meets True Detective

There was a lot of skepticism surrounding Lanterns before its premiere. Green Lantern has already had one very public stumble on the big screen, and the idea of taking one of DC’s most cosmic characters and dropping him into rural Nebraska as part of a murder investigation sounded like the kind of pitch that could either be brilliant or completely ridiculous.

After the first episode, I’m leaning heavily toward brilliant.

HBO Max’s Lanterns opens the door to a very different side of the DC Universe. Instead of immediately throwing audiences into massive space battles, alien civilizations and CGI-heavy superhero spectacle, the series starts with something much more familiar: a mystery. New recruit John Stewart, played by Aaron Pierre, is paired with veteran Green Lantern Hal Jordan, played by Kyle Chandler, as the two investigate a case in the American heartland that slowly begins revealing connections to something much larger. The series is built as an eight-episode mystery and jumps between timelines, with the central story primarily rooted in 2016.

And that’s where the True Detective influence becomes immediately noticeable.

The first episode feels less like a traditional superhero pilot and more like HBO decided to take a crime thriller and quietly sneak a couple of Green Lanterns into it. There is a rural setting, an ominous atmosphere, strange characters, unanswered questions and the feeling that the murder being investigated is only the surface of something much darker. Even the partnership between Hal and John feels deliberately structured around the classic mismatched-detective formula.

That comparison isn’t accidental. Showrunner Chris Mundy has specifically talked about the series being inspired by the first season of True Detective, while describing Lanterns as just as much a buddy-cop story as a superhero story.

The impressive part is that the show doesn’t completely abandon the comic-book mythology to achieve that grounded tone.

This is still Green Lantern.

The rings matter. The Corps matters. Hal Jordan’s history matters. John Stewart’s eventual importance matters. The premiere even finds ways to introduce pieces of Lantern mythology without stopping the story every five minutes to explain comic-book history to the audience. That’s important because one of the biggest mistakes superhero adaptations can make is becoming so obsessed with being “realistic” that they become embarrassed by the very mythology that made the characters interesting in the first place.

Lanterns doesn’t appear embarrassed.

Instead, it asks what Green Lantern would look like if the mythology were treated with the seriousness of an HBO crime drama.

And honestly, that’s a pretty damn interesting question.

The premiere also understands that the Green Lantern concept is inherently built for mystery. These characters are essentially cosmic police officers, so putting Hal Jordan and John Stewart in the middle of an investigation isn’t some desperate attempt to make the property work. It actually makes sense within the mythology. What changes is the scale. Instead of investigating some enormous threat in outer space, we’re watching them investigate something in rural America where everyone seems to have something they’re hiding.

That grounded approach makes the supernatural elements feel even stranger.

The premiere’s biggest strength, however, might not be the mystery at all.

It might be Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre.

Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre Are The Show

The chemistry between Chandler and Pierre is almost immediate.

Kyle Chandler’s Hal Jordan is exactly the kind of veteran who has been doing this for too long. He’s confident, sarcastic, experienced and clearly comfortable being the guy in charge. But underneath that confidence is someone who understands that his time at the top may be coming to an end.

Then you have Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart.

John isn’t Hal.

He’s younger, more disciplined and much less interested in playing along with Hal’s personality. He isn’t walking into this partnership looking for a father figure. He’s there to do a job, learn the ropes and eventually become something greater than the man teaching him.

That creates an interesting tension because Hal understands what John represents before John necessarily understands it himself.

John is the future.

Hal is the past.

And neither man is completely comfortable with that reality.

DC itself previously teased that tension as part of the relationship, describing Hal’s complicated feelings about John potentially replacing him. 

That’s why their banter works so well.

Chandler plays Hal with the kind of effortless arrogance that only works when the actor can make you believe the character has actually earned the right to be arrogant. Pierre plays John with a controlled intensity that gives him the perfect counterbalance. One doesn’t overpower the other. They bounce off each other.

And that chemistry is going to be incredibly important because Lanterns appears to be less interested in simply telling us who Hal Jordan and John Stewart are than showing us what happens when these two very different men are forced to depend on each other.

There is humor between them, but there is also tension.

There is mentorship, but there is competition.

There is respect, but there is also the uncomfortable reality that Hal knows John may eventually replace him.

That’s a much more interesting relationship than simply having the veteran hero teach the rookie how to use a power ring.

The performances are already being singled out as one of the show’s biggest strengths, with reviews praising the natural rapport between Chandler and Pierre. 

And then comes that ending.

Major premiere spoilers ahead.

The decision to end the first episode with Hal Jordan dead completely changes the trajectory of the story. John returns to Nebraska and discovers Hal’s body, with the circumstances surrounding his death immediately becoming another mystery. 

That is a hell of a way to introduce a series.

Instead of simply asking, “Can Hal and John solve this case?” the show suddenly gives us a much bigger question: What happened to Hal Jordan?

And considering Hal is one of the most recognizable characters in Green Lantern mythology, killing him off at the end of the premiere immediately tells the audience that Lanterns isn’t interested in playing everything safe.

The first episode ultimately works because it understands something that many comic-book adaptations forget: you don’t have to choose between mythology and good television.

You can have the rings, aliens, cosmic police officers and comic-book lore while still giving audiences a murder mystery with character development, atmosphere and genuine suspense.

That’s the sweet spot Lanterns seems to be chasing.

It’s Green Lantern through the lens of True Detective, but it isn’t simply copying True Detective. The crime-drama influence gives the series its structure and atmosphere while the Green Lantern mythology gives the mystery a much bigger playground.

And if Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre continue bringing the chemistry they showed in the premiere, the real reason to keep watching may not even be figuring out who killed Hal Jordan.

It may be watching John Stewart figure out what kind of Lantern he wants to become while the man who was supposed to train him is no longer there to finish the job.

For the first time in a long time, Green Lantern doesn’t feel like a franchise searching for an identity.

It feels like it finally found one.